Tuesday’s Travel Rant: Flip-flops breaking

As you guys know, I’m pretty much always on the road but that doesn’t mean I should have to buy new sandals every other week. Admittedly, 90% of the time I’m wearing my flipflops so they do go through a little bit of a battering, however surely the shelf life of these bloody things should be more than 2 weeks?!

Aaaaaaagh

Anyone who has spent anytime traveling in hot countries will relate to this, you’re bag is packed, your fake havianas are almost brand new and you’re walking up the stairs to your hostel room. You take a minor, minor trip, straighten yourself up and continue your trip – wtf?! You stumble forward and the f*cking stem of your flipflop has popped through the bloody sandal again. Pause, take bag off, fight with your flipflop, force it back through the hole (which is of course ridiculously difficult to squeeze through), bag back on, continue, forget about your flipflops.

12 hours later, in a bar, wearing your flipflops, you stumble forward a little bit again, the bloody flipflops pop again, but this time they’re beyond fixing. The hole is too big now so you can’t put them back, great. Now you’re out boozing, with only one sandal, looking like you just climbed out of a garbage skip and you’ve gotta spend the whole night like that.

The flipflops always, ALWAYS break at the most inopportune moment, it’s a fact of life, just like the bread always landing butter-side down and beautiful girls already having bfs, there’s nothing you can do about it.

All we can do is continue to complain about it and keep a spare pare of flipflops in our bag. Happy travels!

Brilliant article! I went through 6 pairs in 3 1/2 months in Asia last year, although one pair got stolen and another other drunkenly lost, know this feeling well, and the worst part we’re always to stingy to buy another £2 pair so end up walking around for a week with them continually popping out at the most inconvenient moments!

You’ll get what you pay. I don’t buy fakes anymore, I always buy the original Havaianas. They’re 25 USD. I traveled around the world for 14 month with just one pair of Havaianas. They lasted until I went back home and even longer. Every Cent worth. Love Havaianas. Plus the fake ones are not as comfortable as the originals.

Hey Johnny is it possible that you send me your broken-in, trashed flip flops to Mexico? I could pay postage and can support you good with your trip in exchange. *Serious offer* in case you are curious, I would just like to collect flip flops with very interesting travel stories behind. I can gladly answer any questions you may have, please send me an email to discuss it further.

How irritating! I only wear flipflops as slippers these days (actually it was my nickname for many years the pigeon version of slippers being ‘silipas’ and har har har sounding so much like Philippa, I am not bitter to be named after an item of cheap footwear, I mean, pirates are called something-boots all the time right?) It reminds me of once when I tripped over a small rock in flipflops, the sole flipped the other way exposing my big toe to the said pointy evil rock. Owwwww, that hurt. On the plus side the flipflop didn’t come out of it’s hole.